Wired has a fantastic post on MIT students Justin Lee and Oliver Yeh, how figured out how to take the above picture for . . . wait for it . . . $148.
They put a camera 18 miles above the earth -- that's half-way into the stratosphere and high enough to see the earth's curvature and the yawning maw of space -- for less than $150.
Their ingenius contraption used a helium-filled weather balloon towing a styrofoam beer cooler. Inside the cooler was (1) a digital camera with an 8 gig memory card set to take pictures every 5 seconds, (2) instant hand warmers to keep the electronics from freezing; (3) a GPS-equipped disposable cell phone to act as a homing beacon once the rig landed. (From that altitude, the beer cooler took 40 minutes to fall back to earth.)
The bad news is that this could very well be what the American military resorts to before Barack Obama is finished with it.
The good news is that it's really, really cheap, which will help a lot because Obama's economic policies are destroying the American economy and the value of the dollar.
There's my two cents.
No comments:
Post a Comment